**I** Got Nuthin'. **YOU** Get a Re-Run.

My muse musta slept in, coz she ain't anywhere to be found on or around the premises.  So there's this (from July, 2009):

Just the Facts, Ma'am… or "How I Came to Know and Love Single-Malt Whiskey." Gordon dropped this lil bit last evening in comments to my End of an Era post:

The funny thing about a distillery tour is that the process is the same for beer and whiskey. With beer they stop after the fermentation; whiskey gets run through the still twice.

It's kind of like touring cathedrals in Europe; one distillery is pretty much like another unless you really get into details like the shape of the still. Of course, the reward at the end is the tasting, which I can't do (but I do smell it). Some places are a little more generous with the samples than others, of course.

You could spend a month touring a couple of distilleries a day in Scotland and still miss a bunch.

Gordon speaks Truth, especially when it comes to Scottish distilleries. I've not been in all that many Scottish distilleries, but my first distillery tour was one of those life-changing experiences and I mean that most literally.

It came to pass that The Second Mrs. Pennington and I decided to take a ten-day camping road trip up to Scotland the first Spring we were in Ol' Blighty. We had had a bout of extremely unseasonal warm weather in the south of England in mid-April… so being the clue-free sorts of people we were when it came to the UK's miserable weather, we loaded up our camping gear in the back of our old Ford Courier the third week in April and hit the trail for Points North. Bad idea... more correctly: bad timing for a rather good idea. But that's not the point of this story… suffice to say we spent more time in bed and breakfast establishments and hotels than we did in our tent, although we did manage to camp out about three of our ten days on the road.

Anyhoo. The focal point of our springtime odyssey was "Castles of Scotland" and we procured a way-cool Ordnance Survey map of just about every Scottish castle there is (or ever was) as our basic guide, planning the excursion so as to take in as many castles as was humanly possible during a ten-day period. Aside: the term "ever was" is key, as more than a few Scottish castles are better described as nothing more than piles of big-ass rocks. But quite interesting rocks, none the less.

And so we set out. It further came to pass once we were in the Highlands… on about our third or fourth day out from London… that Balvenie Castle was on our agenda. And a most beautiful castle it is…

 

(Image from the web site linked above)

But… and here's where serendipity enters the picture… to get to Balvenie Castle one must drive right by the Glenfiddich distillery (conveniently located on Castle Road). Where there is prominent signage right on the lane that says "Tours Daily." Which, of course, seemed like a damned good idea to YrHmblScrb and TSMP. So… we went up the lane about a quarter to a half mile, parked the truck, and proceeded to play among the ruins of Balvenie Castle for about an hour or so. We were alone amid the spectacular ruins of this castle... and that allowed us to run and play like nine-year olds, in the most literal sense of the term.

(Yet another aside: since the Scottish tourist season doesn't really begin until May, TSMP and I found ourselves alone or nearly so at pretty much every castle/tourist spot we hit, with the notable exception of Edinburgh, which… being a city… is fairly crowded year-round. There was a downside, as some of the larger attractions were closed for the season. But there was also an upside to the downside: on at least three occasions we were treated to private tours by resident caretakers who indulged us "since you've come all the way from America!" No shit. Really.)

(A further aside: we took pictures on these trips. LOTS of pictures. And they ALL disappeared in The Great Divorce Cataclysm of 1998. Regrets 'R' Us. In SO many different ways.)


 

So… back to our story, such as it is... we meandered back down the lane, pulled into the distillery carpark (which was nearly deserted, given the season), and went inside for a tour… which was memorable on several different levels, beginning with the fact there were perhaps six of us on the tour and ending with the tasting experience at the tour's completion. Up until that very point in time I had been a blend-guy if and when I drank Scotch, which was rarely. My first sip of Glenfiddich was a revelation and I do NOT use the term loosely. Epiphany would be a better term. When it comes to Scots whiskey it has been single-malts... and ONLY single-malts... ever since the day I took that tour.

And that is how I came to love single-malts. What began as a castle tour opened up a whole new world to me... a world that is still being explored to this day. In other words: so many whiskeys, so little time.

(Final aside: TSMP and I cut our ten-day trip short by a day. We spent our last night out in our tent in a campground somewhere south of Edinburgh and awoke the following morning to about two inches of snow on our tent and the surrounding ground. We set a "personal best" for breaking camp that morning, throwing most of the stuff in the bed of the truck in a supremely disorganized jumble and beating feet for the motorway south towards London, all while listening to The Beeb tell us that we were in peril of being caught up in the UK's biggest blizzard since Gawd-Only-Knows When. Weathermen are all alike, no matter where you are: it's ALL doom 'n' gloom in their world. But these weathermen were speaking truth. We raced that blizzard south, making better time than it did, thank the Deity At Hand. We awoke the morning after we got home to about ten to 12 inches of new snow on the ground… and that was in LONDON. It was much worse "up north," where the motorways were closed. We most definitely dodged a serious bullet, that time. If I have ANY advice to give in this space…"this space" being motor-touring in Ol Blighty… I'd recommend you not go up to Scotland until sometime in May. Mid-May.)

"How I came to abandon single-malt whiskey" is a story o' falling from grace, penury, and the relentless pace o' inflation.  It's ugly, as all tragedies tend to be.  But I have renewed my acquaintance with Scotch blends, this one in particular.

Cigar Art VI and Today's Happy Hour Soundtrack

We figgered we better start numbering these artsy-fartsy cigar art posts, mainly coz we've done more than a few o' 'em.  Our latest:

You'll note we've been in the zone and smokin' bombs... ATOMIC bombs, at that... which, of course, are not to be confused with the sort of bombs these guys are on about:

But I laid around a bit
Then I had another hit
Then I rolled myself a bomba
Then I thought about my mama
Then I fooled around, played around
Jacked around a while and then

I got stoned and I missed it
I got stoned and I missed it
I got stoned and it rolled right by
I got stoned and I missed it
I got stoned and I missed it
I got stoned oh me oh my 

Close... but as they say, "no cigar."  We'll plead the fifth when it comes to bombas of the sort Dr. Hook made famous in music.  Draw your own conclusions, Gentle Reader.

Spring Forward

We did.  We still hate actively dislike it.  We've hated it every year since we began this blogging thang.

2012:

Yeah, an hour less of GOP primary BS is a GOOD thing and I also like the extended verandah time.  But that's it.  It's not as bad as it used to be, though... I REALLY hated this Spring-Forward thang when I was gainfully employed.

2011:

The time change is kicking my ass in a minor sorta way, in that I'm out of sorts and will remain this way for the better part of a week.  Example:  there are still two cups o' morning coffee to finish.  That said, a week's worth o' body clock adjustment will leave me pleased with the "extra" Happy Hour time.  

OTOH... I'm oh-so-glad I don't have to drag my old ass out o' bed and be somewhere tomorrow morning.  The Spring-forward bullshit REALLY kicked my ass during my working years, mainly because I was always an early-guy, always in at 0600 or so.  I saved the above photo as documentary proof, even though it's 13 years old.  (Rochester, NY... c. 1998)

2010:

Spring Forward

Sucks.

I woke up at 1230 hrs.  I poured my first cup at 1245 hrs.  I missed all but the final 11 minutes (and the OT) of the Caps - 'Hawks game.  The day is NOT beginning well.

You get the ideer, right?

Another Small Treasure

I used to have a TON of these things in the way-back:

Note the imperfections and scouring on/in the glass.  That's the original netting.

It's hard to get a good photo without overwhelming flash.  This is an outtake but I like the way it looks.

That would be a glass Japanese fishing net float, and this particular example was scrounged off of a Japanese beach near Wakkanai, Japan, where literally thousands of these things would wash up on the deserted beaches near the air station.  That was back in the day, of course, said day bein' between 1968 and 1970; this is the sole survivor from those days.  Once upon a time I had about 50 of these floats, many of which looked like this:

The largest float in my collection was at least as large as the one pictured above, and I had about three or four of 'em.  I also gifted my father with a few floats and he kept them out on his patio back in the day.

There's a story behind how I acquired my floats, albeit a short one.  My buds and I would take our mo'sickles to the beach while another friend drove his pick-up behind us.  Once we got about five or ten miles away from the air station we'd park the truck and then take off up the beach on the bikes, which we could ride... unimpeded by anything other than sand dunes... for 20 or more miles.  We'd go on our foraging expeditions at low tide and make a day out of it.  Those were great good days, Gentle Reader... yes, they were. 

Many were the times when we'd return to base with the bed of that pick-up filled with glass floats, and I mean FILLED.  The Deity At Hand only knows how many floats we left lying on the beach... we'd reject "bare" floats (without netting) and the ones we considered undersized.  In case you're wonderin' how we managed to get that many floats back to the truck... we jury-rigged travois-like things on the back of the bikes made from bamboo poles and canvas.  You could haul quite a few balls in those things, but once you were loaded up you had to go kinda slow.  But Hey!  Necessity-invention.

We're gonna run out o' subject matter like this pretty rapidly, coz the artifacts in my personal museum are few and far between.  There was that beer opener I featured back in January; here's another small treasure I posted in the near way-back:

And finally... a remark about our ashtray.  This chromium beauty is an antique of sorts, what with having sat on our father's nightstand since my very earliest memory, which goes back to 1949 or so.  She's a beauty:

This is one of my treasured possessions, albeit one that shows the ravages of time.  The chrome isn't as bright as it used to be and there are pockmarks in the plating.  All that just adds to its beauty though, as far as I'm concerned.  I'm thinking the Ol' Man would appreciate the use this artifact is still getting today.

Yup, small treasures.  We has a few.

Bleah

Our Saturday began in the somewhat usual, customary, and reasonable manner... which is to say coffee, overnight mail, post, blog rounds, etc.  Then there was yet another early hockey game but this one began at the much more reasonable hour o' noon, which meant the coffee had been put away (barely), so we had no compunctions about hitting the fridge just after noon.  So we did.

But... about that game.  I shouldn't have bothered, seein' as how the Beloved Wings lost to the not-quite-worst team in the league, 3-0.  The Wings were never in it and looked quite listless, if not supremely unmotivated.  But... like Mickey Redmond said... it was one of those days ya just put behind ya and press on.  Today was the first game in a home-and-home, the second of which takes place tomorrow at the even better hour of 1500L.  I'm thinkin' retribution is in order and I will take steps to ensure a favorable outcome by wearing our Wings sweater for the game.  That's why they lost today, Gentle Reader.  I was out o' uniform.

Our weather has taken a turn for the worst, as well... seein' as how it's 53 degrees, steady 23 mph winds, with gusts to 36... which means we won't take the remainder o' Happy Hour on the verandah.

On the whole?  Bleah.  I'm gonna go back to bed.

Saturday: In Which I Step Out o' Character

Speakin' o' "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous" (and we were), here's an unusual star-turn:



I LIKE this girl even if I have no ideer who Mila Kunis is, really.  But any moobie star who (a) goes to the Marine Ball (I seem to remember sumthin' about that), (b) pours a perfect pint (in her words), and (c) "says yes to everything" (her words, again) is alright in MY book.  The fact she's hot doesn't hurt, either. 

Getting back IN character...



I need one of those guns to put on The Tart's hood.  What fun!

Today's Happy Hour Soundtrack...

... is a misnomer, of sorts.  We seem to be calling Happy Hour earlier and earlier these days, or ever since we've been on what the rest o' the world considers a "normal" (there's that word) schedule.  We prolly might should refer to these late morning/mid-day forays into the fridge as "Liquid Lunch" or sumthin' along those lines.  Or not.  Happy Hour happens when WE decide it should happen, nu?

Now that we're done digressing... on to the music.  We're still into Hot Tuna today (we loaded up an HT CD in the player yesterday, and loaded more o' the same today), and here's a most excellent live cut from the boys:



Ol' Jorma and Jack sure can pick them strings, eh?  Even more impressive is the fact this is a live cut.  I've been a fan o' Hot Tuna ever since Day One, bein' the sorta guy who (a) once loved Jefferson Airplane and (b) loved the spin-off band even MORE.  I say "once loved" because JA was good... really, really good... in the early days, until such time as they morphed into Jefferson Starship and I morphed into a non-listener.  But I've stayed with Hot Tuna, mainly because they seem to be more about the music and less about bein' rock 'n' roll stars.  When a band gets to the point o' bein' rock stars first and foremost they're pretty much done in my book.  That's clearly not the case with Hot Tuna.

I Won't Be Renewing...

... my subscription to this rag:

I subscribed a few months back, have now received four issues and only have one left to go, given the mag is a bi-monthly publication.  I thought subscribing would be a good way to stay in touch with the cigar world, read reviews on what's good and what ain't, and to just generally be better informed about one of the things I dearly love in life.  Well, so much for that.

What I GOT was a hard-copy version of "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous," along with an overdose of Liberal cant.  I don't need a full-page review of watches that cost $12,000.00 and up.  I don't give a big rat's ass about what any given movie or teevee star smokes (said stars bein' featured on the cover of three out of four issues I've received).  I don't want to read reviews of cigars I can neither buy nor smoke any longer... which is to say Cubans*.  The travel guide articles are mostly for tony golf resorts and I don't whack a lil white ball around a park, nor do I fancy vacationing in such an environment.  It's the same sort of thing with their articles on cars... all expensive in price, with a focus on snob appeal rather than how the cars perform.  Meh.

But here's what REALLY screwed the pooch, a scan of a paragraph from an article about the 20th greatest sports somethings in the past 20 years:

Detroit "Redwings."  Sweep of Buffalo?  Fucking poseurs.

*Full disclosure: I did buy Cubans when I lived in Dee-troit (and also while in London), so there's that.  Mebbe the mag has a big audience in SE Michigan.

Around the Horn

Just a few items...  There's this, for starters:

Lawmakers Seek to Change New Medal's Precedence: H.R. 833, a bill introduced in the House that would prohibit the Department of Defense from rating the new Distinguished Warfare Medal as equal to, or higher than, the Purple Heart, had more than 40 co-sponsors as of March 7, according to the Library of Congress' bill-tracking website. Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.), a former marine, introduced the bill on Feb. 26, along with Rep. Tom Rooney (R-Fla.), an Army veteran, and Rep. Tim Murphy (R-Pa.), a Navy Reservist. "Combat valor awards have a deep and significant meaning to those who serve in America's military," said Hunter in a release that same day. He said while there's nothing wrong with a medal "that recognizes commendable actions" off the battlefield—as the DWM is meant to do—"it's absolutely necessary to ensure that combat valor awards are not diminished in any way." The Pentagon introduced the DWM last month, saying it would rank in precedence above the Bronze Star Medal and sit directly below the Distinguished Flying Cross. This drew criticism from some veterans' groups. "If the Pentagon will not reconsider the decision to rank this medal above the Purple Heart, the House will take action," said Murphy. (See also Rooney release.)

It's not often one can say "way t'go!" or similar about our congresscritters.  But this time?  Yes.

Here's lookin' at you, Kid...

Air Frame: A pilot sits in the cockpit of his F-16 Fighting Falcon prior to takeoff at Nellis AFB, Nev., during the Red Flag 13-3 air combat training exercise, Feb. 25, 2013. (Air Force photo by SSgt. Kenny Holston)

An interesting perspective, non?

And finally, in keeping with our aviation/military theme:

Heh.

Cheesy Videos XXVI

Nothing more to add other than what's in the video...



We have an empty chair or two, Gentle Reader, and the beer is both (a) good and (b) cold.  C'mon down!

Just for comparisons sake, here's what Happy Hour looked like in Former Happy Days, Part Two:



Much more pleasant, eh?  The cherry tree, Gentle Reader, it was all about the cherry tree.

Today's Happy Hour Soundtrack

The inimitable Mr. Cohen...

Everybody talking to their pockets
Everybody wants a box of chocolates
And a long stem rose
Everybody knows (Full lyrics here)

Well not everybody wants a box o' chocolates and a long-stemmed rose.  I'll settle for a couple o' beers and a cigar outdoors on the verandah.  Coz it's a BEAUTIFUL day.  See?

Ah, tee shirt weather... at LAST.

Scraping the Absolute Bottom o' the Blogging Barrel

I much prefer the goats.  Who wouldn't?  The REAL question, though, is why did I post this?  And no, I have NOT begun drinkin'.  Yet.

It Took A Day or So...

... but the cartoonists are weighing in on the Dearly Departed:

Burn in Hell, Yew-go.

My mattress weighed in yesterday, too.

(Sigh)  Well, obviously not MY mattress, but Tina and I have much in common.

Broadening, Episode LV

We made a beer and whiskey re-supply run out to Cannon Airplane Patch earlier today and picked up a sixer o' these:

That would be a Dig Pale Ale from New Belgium, rated as "good" by my go-to guys.  I'm on the record as never having met an NB beer I didn't like and that opinion is still valid.  That said, I'm not a big fan of the pale ale genre... mainly coz I don't like the up-front hoppiness of these beers.  Or perhaps it would be the "in yer FACE!" hoppiness.  Whatever the case may be, one can certainly taste the hops in this brew but that taste ain't of the in-yer-face variety.  But oh yes... the hops are most definitely THERE.

It's doubtful that Dig will find a favored and permanent place in my fridge, but it's nice as a change o' pace.  Recommended, if you like that Big Hops thing.

Sequestration's Effect At Cannon Airplane Patch

The AF can't afford sticks for their "planes on a stick" program:

Now it's just "planes in the dirt."  See what you've done, Obama?

The Saddest of Sad Days

It was one year ago today when one of the finest gentlemen I never met died, doing what he loved to do.

Wednesday, March 07, 2012

Tears

Words fail me.

March 7, 2012

I received some sad news earlier today that retired TOPGUN pilot US Navy Capt. Carroll LeFon, better known as Lex of the military blog Neptunus Lex, was killed Tuesday when a jet he was flying crashed at Naval Air Station Fallon in Nevada.

I didn’t have the privilege of knowing Carroll in person like many other bloggers have, but I did chat with him on occasion over e-mail throughout the years and as recently as last year when he won Best U.S. Military Veteran Blog.

He was also one of the first bloggers to appear here on Milblogging.com when and I did a short feature on him back in 2006. 

When I asked him why he started blogging he told me, “I guess you could say I started blogging as a way of sharpening my writing skills. Anyone who`s been to see, or flown fighter aircraft  has stories to tell, and I was interested in getting some of mine out there as well, and seeing what interest there might be. It`s also a sort of on-line diary of thoughts, and reactions to the days events - some of those, looking back, get pretty stale in time - but in doing so you form a kind of community of interest. A fun hobby that lets you interact with other people.”

You can learn more about Carroll on his About page.

His facebook page is here http://www.facebook.com/nep.lex

My prayers go out to the family and friends he left behind.

Here are posts online by other bloggers.

USNI Blog
Susan Katz Keating
Argghhh!!!

I will update this post later in the day with online tributes.

My prayers and condolences go out to Lex's family. The milblogging community has lost its best and brightest, the nation has lost a great patriot, and I've lost my blog-father.

RIP, Captain.  Thank you for all you did, for everyone.

Committed to the Inter-tubes by Buck Pennington on 3/07/2012 10:27:00 AM 

My sense of loss is no less profound one year on.

Yet Another Re-run, But This One Has a Purpose

Those of you Gentle Readers who read the comments to our posts may have noticed The Second Mrs. Pennington made a rare and not unwelcome appearance in comments yesterday.  That appearance sparked the usual, quite customary and somewhat unreasonable exchange between the two of us, which lasted for well over an hour, if not two, and constituted a grand total of 16 back-and-forths.  Like this:

I disputed TSMP's assertion that I've been disrespectful to her on the blog and sent her a link for her perusal, challenging her to find just ONE case of disrespect.  I doubt she'll find any but... just in case... I went looking for an example.  The closest I came to "disrespectful" was this:

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Dreams

All throughout my life I've either been cursed or blessed... depending on your POV... with a general inability to remember my dreams.  I've done a little light reading on the subject and know enough to understand we ALL dream and roughly half of us remember every minute detail of our unconscious nocturnal adventures.  Not me.  Not usually.  Until lately, that is.  Over the course of the last month or so my dreams have been vivid enough to wake me up and some small bits and pieces of those dreams remain in memory.  I'll relate a small part of last night's dream in a minute, but first a digression.

The Second Mrs. Pennington was (is?) one of those types who recall their dreams in exquisite detail.  Her dreams were the subject for conversation over our morning coffee... every morning.  It was part of my duties and responsibilities as consort to listen semi-attentively to her strange and weird experiences; things would NOT have gone well if I had been less than interested.  Which, truth be told, I was... less than interested.  Some people may find it fascinating that you were trapped in a dark hallway with no apparent way out and the terror this situation inspired but I'm not among that select few.  But I did listen.  Duty and obligation.

The thing that always captured my attention, however, were those rare occurrences where I starred in her dreams and acted in an uncharacteristic manner... which is to say less than loving or outright cold, cruel, or callous... depending on the situation.  My response in those cases was "Hey!  I'm not responsible for what I do in your dreams!"  To which she would always reply "Oh but you are. Yes you ARE!"  I think she was serious, too.  End of digression.

So... last evening I was involved in a sort of French aristocratic tableau, where all the characters looked like the ones you see on the right and we were wandering around premises... both in and outdoors... that looked a lot like the image of the château below.

There were quite a few cameo appearances by people from my past but the chief actors in this dream-play were TSMP, her parents, my parents, and (of course) me.  The dream had that "endless flow of time" character that made it seem to go on forever... vignette after vignette that replayed our breakup in semi-slow motion and in the most exotic of surroundings.  There were interventions by her parents and mine, which is odd because our parents were dead when we ended, rather lengthy soliloquies on TSMP's part rationalizing her behavior and so on.  I won't bore you with more detail except for two odd images.  

The Château de Sceaux... where I played as a child.  Connections?

The first: my father was wearing an intricate, finely tooled leather cigar holster (?) from which he would periodically withdraw a lit cigar as he strode around the room, take a couple of draws on it and return it to its place.  I (virtually) thought "I need one of those!"

The second, which was the dream's final scene and the one that woke me up: TSMP was outdoors in a garden seated at a bench writing in a large gilded ledger... and this is after all the shit had hit the fan.  I walked up to her and asked what she was doing.  "This is the final entry in our book," she replied.  I looked down and saw the following... in large, bright red flowing script... "I was only playing at love."

Well.  You ARE responsible for your behavior in my dreams, Darling.  I understand where you were coming from now.

Committed to the Inter-tubes by Buck Pennington on 3/10/2010 01:47:00 PM 12 comments:

Well, now.  That ain't disrespectful, izzit?  I made sure to include the comments to that post, which are interesting.  The exchange between TSMP and I last evening was much less so, in that the conversation only served to illustrate the Liberal trope about the truth being relative.  In this case it most certainly is. 

Today's Happy Hour Soundtrack

We took Happy Hour... still in progress, as we speak... on the verandah today, even though it's a might brisk at 53 degrees.  That temp is bearable, assuming there's both bright sunshine and little-to-no wind.  That's the case today, as opposed to yesterday when it was 20 degrees warmer and 30 mph higher, where the wind is concerned.  Yesterday was not the sorta day where we wanted to be out on the verandah.

But we digress.  We're listenin' to "Blood On the Tracks" today, an album I bought immediately when it hit the shelves in the way-back (about seven months before I met The Second Mrs. Pennington, more about which, below) and an album I constantly return to, even as all these years have gone by.  One such cut (there are intermittent pauses at the beginning o' the vid, but stay with it):

Life is sad
Life is a bust
All ya can do is do what you must
You do what you must do and ya do it well
I do it for you honey baby
Can't you tell? 

That musta been a rhetorical question coz the answer in my case was "no"... she apparently couldn't tell.  As a s'matter o' fact, the girl couldn't tell her ass from her elbow when it really counted.  Still and even... SUCH a great tune!

So?

There's this in the "who gives a big rat's ass" department...



I took the vid from an article in Wired, which says, in part:

Ferrari has just unveiled LaFerrari. It’s the supercar to beat for the next decade, and Porsche, Lamborghini and McLaren are officially on notice.

LaFerrari. It’s a name that evokes … nothing. But while it sounds like something you’d ask for at a tanning salon, let’s not concern ourselves with such trivialities. After all, this is Ferrari, and the Paisans in Maranello know how to build cars capable of blasting past ludicrous speed.

If you’re going to kvetch about the styling, just stop. They’ve honed the Enzo-successor’s shape down the nanometer in the wind tunnel, using decades of Formula One expertise to shape, mold and bend its composite body to the whims of advanced aerodynamics. It’s science at 205 mph, coated in carbon fiber and sprayed in a red that only the Prancing Horse can truly pull off.

Ummm... no.  I won't stop, coz that car is butt-ugly from both the front and the rear.  Note:

Jeeze... I'll bet the motors required to open those doors have more horsepower than a Volkswagen.  We won't talk about the price, which is reputed to be somewhere between 1.2 and 1.5 MILLION Yankee Dollars.  Not that that makes any difference, because all 499 of the cars are already sold, supposedly.

Me?  There are any number of Caddys, Beemers, and Jags I'd rather have at less than five percent of the price of that Prancing Horse.  Or prancing horse's ass... you choose.

Two Re-Runs

It always happens when I go looking for something specific on the blog... in this case it was the name of a tequila I knew and loved in the past.  Searching on "tequila" turned up these two blasts from our past...

Thursday, July 09, 2009

More Wisdom From the In-Box

A friend sends this along...

To my friends who enjoy a glass of wine...
And those who don't.

As Ben Franklin said:
In wine there is wisdom,
In beer there is freedom,
In water there is bacteria.

In a number of carefully controlled trials,
Scientists have demonstrated that if we drink
1 liter of water each day,
At the end of the year we would have absorbed
More than 1 kilo of Escherichia coli, (E. Coli) - bacteria
Found in feces.
In other words, we are consuming 1 kilo of poop..

However,
We do NOT run that risk when drinking wine & beer
(or tequila, rum, whiskey or other liquor)
Because alcohol has to go through a purification process
Of boiling, filtering and/or fermenting.

Remember:
Water = Poop,
Wine = Health.
Therefore, it's better to drink wine and talk stupid,
Than to drink water and be full of shit.

There is no need to thank me for this valuable information:
I'm doing it as a public service!

And we've left the formatting intact, mainly coz I like the script font. We're ALL about freedom here at El Casa Móvil De Pennington, less so about the wisdom that comes bundled with wine. But we have been known to do a glass of Beaujolais now and then... or most any good red. Never white.

In the same vein as the above... here's what My Dear Ol Da used to say about water:

You know why I don't drink water?

No, Dad... why?

Coz fish f*ck in it.

Badda-da-boomp. But the Ol' Man did have a point, ya know. And that quote is verbatim, passed on to me when I was of an appropriate age for the language used therein.

And then there's this... 

Saturday, December 16, 2006

Contrasts...

Taking the day off today. But…just for fun…here’s a study in contrasts. In the first two pics: friends Catherine, Amy and I in Santa Fe, May 2005.

First pic: On the Plaza in the morning, sober as three judges.

Second pic: (Much) Later that same day in a local cantina towards the end of the evening. Take your best guess as to our sobriety. Much fun had by all.

Pics one and two were taken by good friend Cory, who's on the right in pic three.

See all y'all tomorrow.

I think it's been waaaay too long since I've spent a night at the bar in the company of beautiful wimmen and good tequila.  I'm gonna have to work on that.